Fine Arts Department Faculty Take Their Talents Outside of Manhattan College

As students all know professors work extremely hard to bring us new and exciting lessons every semester. While teaching classes and conducting certain events on campus, they still find the time to work on other projects that further enrich themselves in the world of the performing arts inside and outside of the college.

Dr. Mark Pottinger, an associate professor of music as well as the chair and founder of the Visual and Performing Arts Department can often be found in the classroom teaching courses as well as making campus appearances like speaking at Agape Late. His most recent project on campus is taking part in arranging the mural that will be painted under The Founders Bridge, which will be completed by May. When he is not taking part in these events on campus, he is in the city working on other projects.

Dr. Pottinger is a musicologist, which he describes as, “an individual who examines the actual sound, reception, performance and composition of music and its ability to provide thought, meaning and understanding of the human experience.”

His musicologist background has granted him access to public speaking engagements with orchestras and opera companies.

“I was most recently contracted with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra to present pre- and post-concert lectures at their January performances of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique (1830) and Lélio (1832),” Dr. Pottinger said.

In addition to his speaking engagements Dr. Pottinger is also a published writer, with his most recent appearance was December 2015 in the Nineteenth-Century Music Review published by the Cambridge University Press in the UK. The article titled Wagner in Exile: Paris, Halévy and the Queen. The Nineteenth-Century Music Review described the article as an, “Attempt to uncover what Wagner admired about Halévy’s composition, especially within the context of the German composer’s ‘artistic exile’ in France in the early 1840s and the completion of a new dramatic conception of German romantic opera in Der Fliegende Holländer (1843).”

In recent months, Dr. Pottinger was awarded a Berlin Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin, which is allowing him to complete a manuscript for publication.

The book is titled “Romantic Science: Nineteenth-Century Opera in the Age of Becoming.” “The book examines the supernatural elements in three romantic operas and their connection to the natural sciences in the early nineteenth century,” Dr. Pottinger said.

Martin Marchitto is an adjunct professor as well as the Players Director at Manhattan College, but when he is not gearing up for this spring’s production of Little Women, he is also involved with 12 different productions across the country throughout the course of the year.

“I am the resident set designer for the Blue Barn Theatre in Omaha Nebraska where I design sets for five productions a year,” Marchitto said. “In the summer I also design productions for The Ivoryton Playhouse, as small professional theatre in Connecticut. This summer I will be designing the sets for Rent and Chicago.”

While he is the Player’s Director, Marchitto is also the director for two productions a year at Saybrook Stage Company in Saybrook Connecticut. His other projects include being a designer and consultant for the New Haven Ballet’s production at of The Nutcracker and a guest designer at the Choate/Rosemary Hall in Wallingford Connecticut where Marchitto recently designed Robin Hood.

When he is not directing or designing stage plays, Marchitto has another project that he tends to. He serves as the respondent and selector for The Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival.

“[As selector] it consists of attending college productions all over the region to give responses to the students work, and to select which of the productions will move forward to compete in the festival,” Marchitto said.

Since Marchitto has many connections throughout the theater world, when it comes time to stage a Manhattan College production he brings in people from all over the region to help bring the full production to life.

“This year we have Kevin Michael Reed as a guest lighting designer. Kevin designed the lights for Robin Hood at Choate, and our guest costume designer, Elizabeth Cipalina will be designing the costumes for the production of Chicago I am doing the set for at The Ivoryton Playhouse,” Marchitto said.

Director of music and performing arts Andrew Bauer is another person who has a large resume outside of the college. In addition to his faculty and director title, he is involved in the music of different church services across New York.

“I hold the position of Director of Music at Sacred Heart Church in Yonkers,” Bauer said. “I am frequently called on by the Archdiocese of New York to provide music for major liturgies throughout the Diocese in the capacity of organists and choral conductor.”

Bauer also works as a freelance performer, arranger and conductor with his main instruments piano, organ and the flute. With these skills he works as a recording engineer and has produced and engineered music for a variety of artists and musical genres.

Bauer has helped place many Manhattan alumni in professional liturgical music employment at places such as the Mother Cabrini Shrine in Manhattan, the College of Mount St. Vincent, and at many churches throughout Archdiocese. When he is not assisting in placing alumni, he is helping out students at other colleges in the city.

“I am currently working with Professor Kendal Briggs, and his student, James Fallon, of the Juilliard School, on a series of innovative music theory and analyses books primarily of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. My work on these projects involves engraving the music and preparing it for publication,” Bauer said.

Representing just a portion of Manhattan College’s vast amount of accomplished professors and faculty members, Pottinger, Marchitto and Bauer bring their talents both to the school, as well as to the rest of the arts world.

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